Numerous methods and devices have been developed for connecting items of furniture together. Generally, items of furniture have been connected together via screws and nails, an assembly process that is time-consuming, dangerous, and can lead to permanently damaging the furniture and, potentially, the area surrounding the place of assembly. For example, shelves or cabinets with screws attached thereto may fall on the floor, causing the screws to bend and damage the floor. Moreover, the assembly and disassembly of the furniture items can take a long time, generally at least 30 minutes even for the simplest furniture configurations. One or more tools are required to fasten items of furniture together, increasing the install time and potential for incorrect assembly.
Various key-hole type furniture assembly systems have been developed as well. These systems do not generally require screws. However, these systems require that a person connecting the items of furniture, which can be very heavy, connect them very precisely. Even a smallest sideways movement of one of the items of furniture may interfere with the engaging (or disengaging) process and require the person to start the process over. Moreover, disengaging the items of furniture in such an arrangement is also very difficult. In order to disengage the items of furniture, these systems require that a person pushes one of the furniture pieces out of the keyhole, which requires a lot of strength and often leads to the furniture piece “falling back” into the keyhole and locking back into engagement, requiring the person to start the process again. This process is exacerbated even further as the number of screw heads required to be aligned increases. Additionally, these systems are unidirectional; in other words, they may be assembled or disassembled in only one direction (for example, if one end of an item of furniture abuts against a wall or another cabinet), so if the furniture is arranged such that assembly is possible in only one direction, the keyholes need to be oriented to permit assembly in that direction. If they are oriented the opposite way, assembly is not possible.
Some conventional systems generally have screws protruding out of the side that engages with the other engaging mechanism. In other words, the sharpest end of the connection is not protected. This means that if one of the furniture pieces were to fall to the floor, the screw would likely bend, effectively ruining the engaging mechanism and, moreover, the floor would be damaged. Additionally, conventional systems allow for only horizontal or vertical engagement of the furniture items, which makes their application limited.
A need exists for a system for providing power and data port access to office furniture, such as workstations or cubicles. Cables carrying power should be physically separated from cables carrying data to reduce the possibility of crosstalk or unwanted electromagnetic interference that can degrade data integrity.
These and other unfulfilled needs are addressed by the present disclosure.